DOSECC, a global geoscience, engineering and core drilling company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, today announced the expansion of their commercial Fabrication Division, which serves local and regional architectural steel and custom metalwork clients in addition to the firm’s complex drilling operations around the globe. The 10,000 square foot facility provides precision fabrication and welding services for construction, aftermarket automotive enhancements, custom metalwork projects, as well as repairs to clients across the Intermountain west.

“Our in-house fabrication, engineering and welding team has developed custom hardware for DOSECC’s complex global drilling operations for decades, and we are accustomed to meeting the highest demands for precision and performance in some of the most extreme conditions around the world,” explained Philippe Wyffels, DOSECC C.F.O., “It is fitting that more private and commercial ventures outside the drilling industry are increasingly turning to our facility for their construction and custom fabrication projects.”

“Our drilling work requires us to uphold a higher standard of performance, as we don’t have the luxury of simply hoping it will work when we design a custom piece of equipment for a remote drill,” explains Jordan Whitaker, head of DOSECC’s fabrication division. “We engineer and test until we have 100% confidence before it leaves our facility, which saves hours and money in the field. Some fabrication shops simply build a customer’s design and send it out the door, whereas our engineering team takes the extra steps to test and work with the design–just as we do with our drilling projects–so we are confident it will serve its intended function without fail. Thus our tagline: Engineered Confidence.”

DOSECC has launched a new website to showcase the capabilities its Fabrication Division for outside commercial clients. For more information, please visit DOSECCFabrication.com.

Global Geotechnology Firm to Assist with Wide Range of Scientific Inquiry on the New Icelandic Island

DOSECC, a global core drilling company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, today announced that they have been selected for a scientific drilling project on the newborn island of Surtsey, off the coast of Iceland. The project will gather data for a wide range of scientific inquiries, including volcanology, hydrothermal alteration, subsurface thermal ecosystems, and even further understanding of anthropological geology. For example, the rare mineral aluminum tobermorite in the young island was a primary cement ingredient in early Roman cements made with saltwater which still stand to this day. The Principal Investigators on this project are Dr. Marie Jackson from the University of Utah and Dr. Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson from the University of Iceland.

“A similar hole was drilled 35 years ago by USGS, and we are going to drill an identical hole next to it to see what’s happened since the island erupted in 1963,” explained DOSECC President and geoscientist Dennis Nielson, Ph.D. “We want to see how much it has cooled off, how much additional rock alteration has taken place, and also do something that hasn’t been done there before: set up an observatory for life in the subsurface.”

The project is funded by the International Continental Drilling Program in cooperation with a cooperative of scientific groups across Iceland and Europe. Environmental protection efforts are included in the project to ensure the protection of the World Heritage Site and its nesting birds. Once environmental clearance of the project is given, shipping and logistics will begin to prepare for a target drill date of mid-August before the weather turns at the end of September.

“DOSECC has drilled in Iceland before, and is particularly excited about being involved in the Surtsey exploration,” continued Dr. Nielson. “This is a unique environment, as it is boiling right at sea level, then falls off the boiling point curve. The microbiologists like that rare combination, as the heat potentially prevents biocontamination of the subsurface from rain or outside environments, so the existing thermal life can be studied in this unique environment. And that is just one component–there is a lot of scientific inquiry on this one drill.”

For more information about Surtsey and other DOSECC core drilling projects around the world, please visit DOSECC.com/Surtsey.

Global Scientific Core Drilling Company Working with DOE, Enercon, and NM Community to Drill to New Depths, Determine Viability of Deep Hole Waste Storage

January 23, 2017, Salt Lake City, UT.

DOSECC Exploration Services, a global drilling company and subsurface technology firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah, announced today that they, as part of a team led by Enercon Federal Services, Inc., were awarded a contract by the US Department of Energy to evaluate the scientific and technical aspects of drilling deep, large diameter boreholes in crystalline rock for the safe and effective disposal of waste. Although holes of this type may eventually be used for the disposal of certain forms of nuclear waste, the purpose of this contract is to investigate the geological and geochemical properties of deep granite and evaluate techniques for drilling large diameter (8-3/4″) holes to a depth of 5,000 meters (16,405 feet) in this environment. No nuclear waste will be placed in the hole or be used in the project in any way. The project will be conducted near the town of Nara Visa, New Mexico. DOSECC will be partnering with Enercon Federal Services, Wastren Advantage and Fugro.

“This test is deeper and larger than what has typically been drilled in crystalline rock, yet our team is accustomed to these types of challenges, and is uniquely prepared to contribute to new solutions that will benefit society,” explained DOSECC President Dennis Nielson. “We have spent the past 23 years conducting scientific drilling projects worldwide, always while working closely with the communities where we work, so this project is right up our alley.”

Most of this year will be spent working with local communities and government entities to communicate the purposes and methods of the testing including: how the site will be responsibly managed during testing, how the land will be restored once the research is complete, as well as permitting the hole and developing the drilling and testing plan. Since previous efforts to test this method in North and South Dakota lacked community support, DOSECC’s strong track record of building trust with residents through transparency and communication was a factor in their selection.

Marc Eckels, DOSECC Program Director for this project explains, “This will be important to our society as a whole, yet we cannot succeed without the community’s support. We work with them to detail our commitment to a responsible scientific study. In addition, efforts are always made to hire and purchase services and supplies from the local area whenever possible.” Eckels explains further that the data gained from this uniquely deep geological research has potential for other local and societal benefits, such as providing new drilling and testing techniques for geothermal energy applications.

“We are pleased to work with Enercon and have been impressed by their team as we’ve worked together thus far,” reports Philippe Wyffels, DOSECC CFO, “We have a superior site and a superior team to carry out the project, and have had positive experiences thus far with the community, including the passage of a county resolution supporting our scientific work.”

The scientific drilling and data collection itself will not likely commence until the spring of 2018, once the DOE determines the most promising site where a successful community partnership has been established. When the drilling portion begins, the scientific drilling team will be tasked with drilling a 5000-meter deep borehole 8-3/4” in diameter. If successful, a second borehole, 17” in diameter, would be drilled to the same depth at the same site. The data gathered will allow scientists to study the type and temperature of the rock as well as the nature and chemistry of the fluids encountered.

For more information about this and other DOSECC core drilling projects around the world, please visit DOSECC.com.

DOSECC announced today the addition of several associates to its drilling services team as the company continues to expand its full-spectrum project capabilities. In addition to global core drilling operations, the firm provides clients with full project management services, preliminary site assessments, equipment engineering and fabrication, and final data analysis.

With the successful conclusion of the high-profile Chicxulub Crater project last month, we are sharing here the kudos the project team received from around the world. The Chicxulub core drilling project sought to shed light on the crater left by the asteroid that led to a global mass extinction—what geophysicist and expedition leader Joanna Morgan called “The most important event in the last 100 million years.” The drilling was recognized and photographed by journalists and scientists from around the world, the Governor of Yucatan, and even an astronaut orbiting the earth.

Here are just a few excerpts of the coverage:

“In the coming weeks, a team of scientists will begin drilling Chicxulub’s central peak ring for the first time. Discover will be on site in Mexico as the team tries to answer some of those questions.”

“An extraordinary vessel—part ship and part drilling rig —is being equipped in the port of Progreso, Mexico, to drill into Earth’s past. This spring and summer it will attempt to recover a thin cylinder of rock, 3 ¼ inches wide by 3,300 feet long, starting in the Eocene world about 50 million years ago, drilling all the way back into rocks created and contorted by an asteroid impact, 66 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared.”

“The Chicxulub crater, as the site is known, is buried in sediment and hidden beneath some 1,500 feet of water. That makes it very hard to study, even though it’s ground zero of one of the worst mass extinctions in Earth’s history, one of just five times when life itself out on the planet was in danger of being snuffed.”

“In addition to being interesting from an extinction element, it’s also interesting because it’s a well-preserved, very large crater that we can access without leaving the planet. It’s equivalent to studying the really big craters with peak rings, for instance, on the moon, on Mercury, on Mars — but obviously at a fraction of the cost.”

—Sean Gulick, University of Texas at Austin geophysicist, team co-lead

“A team of scientists recently set off to drill a 1,500m-deep hole into the seabed off the coast of Mexico. Their goal is to learn more about the asteroid impact some 66m years ago that many scientists believe killed the dinosaurs.”

“Drillers will quickly bore their way through the top 500 metres of sediments, and then collect core samples more carefully as they go deeper…At about 600 metres, the core will pass through rock from the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, when temperatures spiked about 55 million years ago, creating a greenhouse world. At 650 metres the core should hit the peak ring.”

“We went through a remarkable amount of the post-impact world. All the way into the Eocene times — so between 50 and 55 million years ago.”

—Sean Gulick, University of Texas at Austin geophysicist, team co-lead

YUCATAN.COM There’s Life in the Chicxulub Crater (May 17, 2016)“The first results of the Chicxulub crater project are encouraging with valuable clues, say scientists of Mission 364.” English version here –

http://dosecc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SLANT-logo.png00risehttp://dosecc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/SLANT-logo.pngrise2016-06-15 18:10:432016-07-13 16:15:16Chicxulub Project Watched Around the World

This month Mission 364 began research work at the Chicxulub Crater site. Scientists in charge of the project are encouraging and say they already are seeing interesting results.The evidence found in the layers of earth found 32 kilometers from the sea port of Progreso confirms the prehistoric stage of the event. To successfully complete the project, the team had to reach the layer of the meteorite impact under the Gulf of Mexico. Experts expect to obtain samples of microbial life that reveal data on the recovery of life after the crash of the celestial body which is believed to have caused the extinction of 76% of life in the Cretaceous period.

So far the project has resulted in 100 cores of sediment and rock fragments with an approximate age of 66 million years, which corroborate the geological timeframe of the phenomenon being studied. The evidence being collected will allow researchers, after an exhaustive analysis in German laboratories, to determine whether or not microorganisms were able to survive in the area covered by the impact area.

Background

In 1952, Pemex began drilling the first well in the subsoil called “Chicxulub 1”. That drilling confirmed that there was no oil in that region of Yucatan, but some anomalies were discovered in the lower strata. Geophysical studies later determined the existence of a crater in the area.Decades later and after further studies, on Saturday [May] 14, a team of researchers tackled the Myrtle drilling platform to begin drilling in the earth’s crust in the area of ​​impact. The first rock samples were found at a depth of 500 meters, the final goal is 1,500 meters.To understand the work being done on the platform, reporters from Grupa Megamedia set sail aboard the ship “Linda F.” and came to the place called Chicxulub Crater. There, a group of scientists led by Drs. Jaime Urrutia Fucugauchi and Ligia Pérez-Cruz, the Institute of Geophysics of the UNAM and other specialists from six countries explained the progress of the investigation, how they obtained the samples, and how the core analysis will be studied to confirm their theories.“The expectations we had at the beginning of the project are being met, as we have drilled almost 750 meters and the first part corresponding to the stage of Paleogene, where some microfossils were found, which could imply the analysis was done in the preliminary strata,” explains Dr.. Ligia Perez-Cruz.

After a brief tour on the platform to better understand the laboratories and the methods used to extract samples, Dr. Sean Gulick of the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Texas, and Dr. Joanna Morgan of Imperial College in London, said that after drilling, underground sensors are introduced to collect data and determine the type of material found at that depth. The rocks are then removed and passed to an initial laboratory where they are cleaned and are subsequently analyzed by microbiologists on board. Later, the rocks are taken to another laboratory for microbiological analysis.

Under a new contract with the University of Minnesota-Duluth, DES is designing and building a drilling system that will map the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet and search for the oldest ice. DES will drill through 1 1/2 miles of ice to reach bedrock. Subsequent optical logging is expected to reveal if the ice contains volcanic ash, gas bubbles, and other materials that will help the scientific community gauge what the Earth’s climate was like a million years ago – and how it’s changed since. More information about the project can be found here.

“This is the most ambitious scientific and climate research project we’ve ever done,” said Dennis Nielson, DES chief executive officer. “No one has ever drilled through the Antarctic ice sheet and sampled the bedrock underneath, and we’re creating the Rapid Access Ice Drilling [RAID] system so the university can collect samples faster and more efficiently than through traditional drilling methods.”

About DOSECC Exploration Services

DOSECC Exploration Services (DES) provides a range of drilling services to assist clients with scientific research, geothermal and mineral exploration projects worldwide. We specialize in the collection of high-quality continuous core samples and can operate in both land and shallow marine-based settings. Our experience, equipment and innovative abilities allow us to tackle projects that have unique sampling requirements in remote and challenging environments. We honor our commitment to safety, the environment, our clients and our people. For more information, visit www.dosecc.com.